February 17, 2006

The latest issue of Science contains a paper by Eric Rignot and Pannir Kanagaratnam claiming that glaciers along the periphery of Greenland are melting at a rapidly increasing rate. Another paper on this subject was published by Science just last year. Ola Johannessen did not consider direct ice lost by glaciers into the ocean but instead only focused on elevations changes. Johannssen showed that increasing snowfall in Greenland was leading to greater ice accumulations than had previously been measured and this was acting to slow Greenland’s contribution to sea level rise. It was conspicuously ignored in this new report.

February 10, 2006

In the February 8 New York Times, NASA’s Jim Hansen again complained that his ideas on climate change are being suppressed by the Bush Administration, which is destroying our democracy by censoring climate science. According to the Times:

“On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed,” he said. “The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That’s the big issue here.”

On the other hand, Hansen thinks that lying about climate change in order to get attention is just peachy.